


a day in the life

by aces



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen, Team, yay team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being in charge of America’s attic, your work is really never done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a day in the life

**Author's Note:**

> Set toward the beginning of season 3, non-spoilery for later episodes in the season.

Artie woke to his Farnsworth buzzing, possibly the most grating sound an individual could wake up to (well, actually, there are far worse sounds; and Artie’s woken to many of them, but the Farnsworth still has a particular way of making him jump, his heart pound, the adrenaline soar, that is fundamentally _annoying_ when one has reached his particular time in life).

Artie snorted and rolled over in bed and blindly reached for the Farnsworth first, his glasses second. “What,” he barked as soon as he had the communications device open, free hand still seeking his glasses on his bedside table.

“They’re not _open_ on Mondays,” Pete said in aggravation.

“They’re not open to the _public_ ,” Artie growled back. “You’re not the public. Is this why you woke me at—7:30?” Artie was suddenly wide awake. “It’s _seven-thirty in the morning_? Why the hell didn’t my alarm go off?”

“I don’t know, Artie,” Pete said long-sufferingly, “I’m not _in_ South Dakota, am I. I am in fricking Topeka, Kansas investigating something at a _historical society_.”

“Where’s Myka?” While Myka usually demanded answers to questions Artie didn’t feel like answering, he found he could handle her better when Pete was in a whiny mood.

“Getting coffee,” Pete muttered. “We just got in a couple hours ago; _why_ couldn’t we have flown again?”

“Budget cutbacks.” Artie swung his feet over the side of the bed, having finally found his glasses. “And Topeka is not all that far from here. Go, shoo, investigate, report back to me when you actually have something pertinent to say.” He flipped the Farnsworth closed on Pete’s protests and went to get dressed.

*

Artie hated sleeping in. It was a sign of weakness; and besides, whenever he accidentally slept later than he meant to, he always felt like he spent the rest of the day trying to catch up with himself.

First step: coffee.

Second step: computers. Power them up, turn them on, check for any overnight pings. If nothing, keep Claudia and Jinks working on inventory. Jinks got restless doing inventory for too long, but Claudia had really got the hang of descriptions and cataloging these days and she usually could keep Jinks entertained enough that he wouldn’t go and do something stupid like accidentally touch an artifact.

Usually.

Artie shook his head and looked over the warehouse map, checking for any failures, faults, defects in the maintenance and facilities systems. It looked like the water pipes near Allentown 24D had leaked again. _Dammit_ , he’d told Mrs. Frederick about those pipes _weeks_ ago and she still hadn’t signed the requisition forms he needed to get the necessary supplies to fix the problem, and it wasn’t like he could just call in some _normal_ plumber to come take care of the problem for him—

“New Skool BSG is _so much better_ than Old Skool,” Claudia’s ever-dulcet tones burst into the office, “I can’t even believe you’re arguing with me about this.”

“Oh, sure, it’s all flash and drama,” Jinks followed Claudia inside, “but c’mon, the old Cylons are way cooler to look at than the new guys—”

“What _evs_! C’mon, you’ve gotta admit Caprica was pretty hot…okay, maybe you don’t. Leoben, though, surely you can appreciate ex-Ray Kowalski’s aesthetic virtues—”

“Why, hello, minions,” Artie said, swinging around in his chair to glare at them. “I take it you’re here to work today and not discuss pop culture?”

“Good morning to you too, Artie,” Claudia looked at him warily as she dropped her backpack on the couch. “Feeling alright there, boss?”

“Peachy,” Artie said, and Jinks looked over at Claudia, mouthing “Coffee” in a way he probably thought would be missed by Artie. It was almost endearing. “I want you two working inventory today.”

Steve groaned, flopping on the couch next to Claudia’s backpack. “Again?”

“Yes, again.” Artie pushed his chair across the room to whack Jinks’ knee with his newspaper, and Steve sat upright, startled. “You can use it as time to meditate. Just don’t get too Zen, you’re liable to forget what you’re doing.”

“ _Why_ do we have to do inventory all the time?” Jinks asked Claudia as they headed out of the office into the warehouse proper. “The database seems pretty accurate, and it’s not like the artifacts are running away or something.”

“Uh, actually?” Artie heard Claudia’s dubious voice fade away. He breathed a sigh of relief. He had never been a morning person. He’d probably never really been a people person either, come to think of it.

He closed his eyes, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug as he went through his mental to-do list. It always seemed to get longer every time he turned around, and he was forever having to shuffle things on it, re-prioritize what needed to get done first. He’d need to talk to Mrs. Frederick today, get her to move more quickly on those forms so he could get his water pipes fixed. He should probably contact Dr. Magnus soon too, let her know about some abnormals he’d heard about in Pierre in exchange for any information she might have about artifacts. (Of course, _she_ was practically an artifact. He tried not to think that too loudly around her; it was far better to have her on his side than not. He had long ago learned that lesson.)

But, so long as Pete and Myka did not run into too much trouble in Topeka, perhaps he could actually work on the backlog today.

Artie opened his eyes and smiled, turning to look at his work table. The backlog, the plague of any curator’s existence, but most especially of such a specialized curator as himself. Not that Artie thought of himself as a curator, not really. Well. Curator with a Tesla, maybe.

Of course that was when an alarm went off.

“Of course,” Artie muttered to himself and pushed his chair back across the room to the computer to find out what had happened this time. So long as it wasn’t Steve picking something up he shouldn’t have, or Claudia getting creative with something _she_ shouldn’t have—

“Dammit,” Artie swore when he saw the map section that was blinking. The Isle of Lost Toys, some previous warehouse agent had nicknamed that area, and it had stuck. He didn’t like going in that section of the Warehouse. It was depressing.

“You’re just not going to let me enjoy my morning, are you?” he said out loud, looking up at the ceiling. There was a crack of thunder in the distance, in the exact direction he’d be heading, and his scowl deepened.

“Hmph,” he said, putting down his coffee mug.

*

Why on earth Lady Jane Grey’s Bible was in the Isle of Lost Toys, Artie had no idea; it was most definitely not the toy of a child, but the Nine-Day Queen had had little joy in her life, outside of her religious studies, so perhaps it was not so surprising that it had been classified into that area of the Warehouse.

In any case, the activity was unacceptable, and Artie gave the book an extra dose of purple goo and a stern talking-to—he didn’t think the talking-to actually ever did anything, but it relieved his feelings—and started back for the office and his coffee. Perhaps he could persuade Leena to drop by with some pastries of some sort, he really should be better at getting breakfast more regularly, and he could use her help sorting out where those new artifacts belonged in the Warehouse—

Farnsworth again, and Artie flipped it open, growling, “You’d better be inside by now.”

“Uh, we are,” Myka said, glancing in mystification off-screen, and Artie could easily imagine Pete’s elaborate, innocent shrug. “But we’ve hit a slight snag; they won’t actually let us—touch anything.”

“Well, no,” Artie said. “They’re archivists and curators; they tend not to let _any_ body touch anything. Sometimes even themselves.”

“But, Artie, if we can’t handle any of their artifacts, how can we figure out if it’s actually one of _our_ artifacts?”

“Talk to Terry Eastwick,” Artie advised. “Works in the museum collections. He’s one of my old contacts, we used to communicate regularly. I’m sure he can help you.” He flipped the Farnsworth closed without bothering to say good-bye, cutting off whatever Myka had been about to say. She focused on the pleasantries too much, though it came in handy in the field.

James had usually handled the pleasantries. He had been a much smoother and more charming talker than Artie.

Artie shook the thought of James away with the ease of long practice, trudging back through the corridors and corridors of stuff. He’d take a shortcut through Apple Lane; he needed to check in on that section anyway. Something had been acting up in there, drawing all the rats and other vermin that got into the warehouse toward it. He had a feeling it was the Pied Piper’s pipe, blasted thing.

He passed Steve and Claudia along the way—he could tell because he could hear them giggling. “You’d better be working!” he yelled across the shelves, and they instantly got quiet.

“We are!” Claudia hollered back.

“We so totally are!” Jinks added.

“I don’t believe you!” Artie said but continued on his way; he’d made his point.

He found and dealt with the pipe, hoping that would be the end to that particular problem. He also had to dispose of five mice, a bat, two birds, and a plethora of various bugs—now that he thought about it some more, he _shouldn’t_ have dealt with the artifact. It was acting as a sort of pest control, after all…

Artie shook his head at the folly of his own thoughts and went back to the office to get some work done.

*

“Eastwick doesn’t work here anymore,” Myka said without preamble when Artie opened his Farsnworth, not even five minutes later. “He hasn’t worked here for six years; they had a major round of lay-offs and lost a bunch of staff.”

“Oh.” Artie was momentarily stumped. He’d have to make a note of that for his records. And cultivate a new contact, dammit. He used to be so much better about keeping up-to-date on these things; had contacts at every state historical society, in fact, and every branch of the National Archives, but they were all disappearing through retirement and damned budget cutbacks. He would probably have to swallow his pride and ask Claudia to set him up some kind of system on the computer. “Well, what about, what’s her name, Felicia Richardson? Is she still the main manuscripts curator?”

“She’s division director now for archives and manuscripts.”

“Oh, good, talk to her, she should remember me.”

“She does,” Pete butted in, pushing his way into the screen view next to Myka, who rolled her eyes but shifted a little to accommodate him. “She _really_ won’t let us touch anything now, not even the books in the reference room. You stole something from a state historical society, Artie? Seriously?”

“They wouldn’t hand it over,” Artie said defensively. “Even though I’d _told_ them that document signed by John Brown would cause them far too much grief—”

“Yeah, well, guess what document they just got this time?” Pete interrupted him with long practice.

Artie’s eyes narrowed. “What,” he said, and Myka swung the Farnsworth around so Artie could see a banner over the main lobby doors.

Topeka Constitution Found, it said, and Artie groaned. “Oh great,” he said.

“So what?” he could hear Pete’s voice, sounding confused.

“So, so, so it was the first constitution of Kansas, the first one to be rejected by the U.S. Congress,” Artie said. “So it was a free-state constitution created by an illegal free-state legislature, while the technically legal pro-slavery legislature fought tooth and nail to make sure it wouldn’t pass. Territorial Kansas history is awash in the blood of regional and national conflict; finding such an important document from such an unstable and violent era is never a good thing.”

“Artie, they’re not going to just hand that constitution over,” Myka’s voice was small as she turned the Farnsworth back around so she could look at him. Her brow was furrowed in concern. “Even if you didn’t already apparently have a history with them, it’s a vitally important state record.”

“Then you’re going to have use all your collective charm and wit to figure something out, won’t you?” Artie said irritably and slammed the Farnsworth shut.

*

He got in a solid two hours on the backlog before any more interruptions came his way. Artifacts from Mesmer and Hatshepsut, another of Helena Wells’ damned contraptions and a peace pipe from the Chickasaw tribe. He didn’t understand why Steve had so much trouble doing inventory; he found cataloging very soothing, very Zen in fact, taking measurements and writing up physical and contextual descriptions and uploading photographs of the items into the database. No matter how much he griped about computers, he was truly proud of their database, proud of the physical and intellectual control they had over their space and objects. PastPerfect only _wished_ it had this kind of sophistication.

He also enjoyed pulling out the typewriter and writing up the catalog cards, though. The database was superb, he admitted it, but there was nothing like paper and card stock.

He’d just started researching Frank Lloyd Wright’s drawing table, recently brought in by Claudia and Jinks from Taliesin, when Mrs. Frederick called to lecture him about some quarterly reports he hadn’t turned in yet that were two weeks overdue. In turn he griped at her about his water pipes, and she told him to get his reports in if he wanted to see any such requisition forms, and he told her blackmail was conduct unbecoming a Warehouse guardian, and she called him a few choice names before cutting off the connection. Artie sat back smugly; when she resorted to swearing at him, he knew he’d won, and he’d have those forms by tomorrow morning at the latest. Budget cutbacks there may be, and bureaucracy may in fact outlast civilization, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to ensure the safety of his Warehouse and the objects inside it.

It used to worry him, how fiercely he cared about these things, these items under his care and responsibility. But he had long ago accepted his role in this particular grand scheme of things.

At some point the two youngest agents clattered past, calling out something about lunch, but Artie was deep into researching the history of Barbara Wright’s blouse, the one she’d worn during her first encounter with the Daleks. Nasty bunch, from everything he’d ever heard or read; Artie was glad _he’d_ never run into them. He had to take a half-hour break at some point to mend some loose electrical wiring near the Bronze Sector; the alarm was beginning to drive him crazy. He spoke soothingly to the wiring as he fixed it, patted the wall when he was done and turned the breaker back on. On the way back to his workspace he made note that the real Stone of Scone needed a new container, and he had a feeling they were running low on that particular size and shape of non-reflective, vacuum-sealed box. Damn, those were custom jobs, very finicky and expensive. One more thing for him and Mrs. Frederick to yell about.

When he made his way back to the office, Leena was waiting for him. She’d brought sandwiches and grapes with her, a container of freshly-made lemonade. “You missed lunch again,” she lectured and stepped in front of his work table with her bag of food, blocking his path. “And I’m assuming you skipped breakfast again since you didn’t drop by this morning.” He glared. She glared back. “We all know how cranky you get without food,” she said. “Cookies?” she added, raising a finger to stop him speaking. “Don’t count.”

“Hmph.” Artie snatched the bag out of her hand and sat down by one of the computers. He handed her one of the sandwiches, and she took it with a graceful nod of thanks. “Does my aura turn a funny color if I’m hungry?”

“No funnier than usual,” Leena replied serenely; she rarely responded to his bark, knowing it held no bite behind it for her. She was looking at the work table, covered in artifacts. “I’m glad you’re finally getting something done on the backlog.”

“So’m I; I’m glad you came over, actually, I was going to ask for your help figuring out where to put these. Mesmer’s glass armonica in particular is troubling me, I don’t know if it would be better to put it with the general musical instruments or if it wouldn’t be safer over in Whimsies by Winston Churchill’s cigar case.”

Leena nodded thoughtfully, and they debated the finer points of artifacts’ energies and the combination or negation thereof. Finally they were both satisfied about where best to locate the items, and Leena even offered to stay and help Artie put them away.

“ _Damn_ this piece of twenty-first century hoopla,” Artie said, smacking the side of the monitor when the database froze for the fifth time that day. Fantastic it may be, but it was also a massive amount of data that needed to be searched and manipulated in highly sophisticated ways, and it made the computers cranky. He would have to talk to Claudia about upgrading the RAM again, or doing something even more complicated that she would attempt to explain to him in tedious detail.

He heard another rumble of thunder out in the distance somewhere, and he looked out at the warehouse, glaring. “Don’t you start again!” he yelled, and there was a crack of lightning in response.

“Is it too much to ask that you be cooperative for _one_ day?” Artie threw the question out rhetorically and headed into the stacks once again to find the source of the problem.

“Artie!” Myka sounded breathless when he opened his Farnsworth not a moment later. “Artie, do you think it would be a problem if they kept a digitized scan of the constitution and made a replica of it?”

Artie frowned as he considered. “No,” he said at last, “I think that would be alright. There are other versions of that constitution lying around, at least one copy in the National Archives, that have lain dormant all these decades; it’s the paper and the ink of that particular document itself, its intrinsic value, that I’m guessing will cause any problems. The text should be fine. Does that mean you and Pete finally came to a compromise with the society staff?”

“Yeah,” Pete put in, out of sight. “It helped when their archivist started trying to beat up a co-worker from Missouri.”

“The co-worker was one of her bosses,” Myka added, wincing a little at the memory.

“Awkward,” Pete sing-songed. “Dr. Richardson gave us permission to take the document after that, so long as they could get it scanned and put into their—digital repository or something? I don’t know, whatever, we’re getting the artifact today and coming home.”

“Good work, people,” Artie said, and there was another crack of thunder.

“Artie?” Myka sounded concerned. “Everything okay over there?”

Artie glared up at the warehouse ceiling. “As okay as it ever is,” he said. “We’ll expect you back tomorrow.” He shut the Farnsworth and veered left at the next intersection, heading deeper into the stacks.

It was quiet back here. Artie took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, breathed in again. Sometimes he’d cart his work back here, just so he’d have some peace and quiet away from the squabbling agents and apprentices. Of course, that only worked if nobody else was also working amidst the artifacts with him; he waved at Leena a couple shelving units over, and she waved back absently, focused on finding a place to put Isadora Duncan’s scarf on a shelf already full of other textiles.

“How did you know, though?” he overheard Claudia, a couple rows away and a few aisles down on his other side. “I mean, _when_ did you know?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Steve replied, and Artie couldn’t actually see either of them. “I think I always knew I was gay. It was easier for me to be friends with girls than to want to date them, that’s for sure. Why?”

“Because, uh…”

“Claudia?” Jinks sounded concerned, and Artie, against his will, slowed down, his attention suddenly all directed toward the young woman he couldn’t even see at the moment, worry for her momentarily swamping worry for the Warehouse. “Claudia, you know you can tell me, right?”

“I kinda think I might be bi,” Claudia said in a rush.

Artie, with phenomenal self-control, refrained from groaning aloud. “Oh,” he heard Steve say and could imagine the look on Jinks’ face. “What makes you think that? Or, well, who?”

 _Move_ , Artie lectured himself. _Move_ now. _This is not yours to overhear. She’ll tell you if and when she’s ready._ But his legs weren’t even twitching.

“Um, well…people? Like, just, you know, lately more and more I just—notice more…women. I think I’ve always kinda noticed, but I was always focusing more on the cute guys than the cute girls, you know? It was the acceptable thing to do, and I was already enough of a freak anyway…”

“You’re saying you don’t have a total crush on Myka?” Jinks said, and then he yelped. “Ow!”

“Don’t say that out loud!” Claudia yelled and immediately quieted her voice down again. “Anyway, so what if I do? Dude, _you_ practically have a crush on Myka and you’re not even into girls.”

“She’s kinda hard not to,” Steve admitted, and Claudia laughed. Artie breathed out. Her laugh had sounded normal, she sounded normal; everything was fine and he could get back to his task.

“Anyway, I dunno, ever since the whole massive break-up with Helena…”

“Wait, what?” Jinks said for Artie, which was good, since Artie still didn’t want either of them to know he was around, and it was taking all his self-control at the moment not to swear out loud. “She and Helena—what?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Claudia said. “But I swear there was some hanky-panky going on between those two. They were waaaaay too intense to just be ‘good friends.’ Myka took H.G.’s betrayal _really_ hard.”

Artie kept exercising great self-restraint. _Why_ did every Warehouse agent have to leap straight into drama? Myka had always tended to be a little high-strung, but at least she could usually control herself, unlike Pete.

Artie slipped away before he heard anymore details from either Jinks or Claudia about which he would have preferred remaining oblivious. He found the source of the lightning: Qin Shi Huang’s immortality elixir was interfering with the pistol Daniel O’Connell had used in his duel against John D’Esterre. Thank goodness he’d sorted that out before any of the others found it; he didn’t even want to contemplate what Pete or Claudia would have done under that combined influence of life and death instincts.

Starting back for the office, he found his composition running through the back of his mind. It did that, sometimes; and sometimes instead he heard his father’s voice in the back of his mind, lecturing that he hadn't been working and practicing enough. He usually preferred it when it was the music. It meant he’d have to take some time soon to work on it, but he thought he could do that. While he baked a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, perhaps; Claudia really liked those, and he thought she might need a pick-me-up after her little emotional confession to Jinks.

Not that he would tell her _why_ he’d baked them, of course.

He was just placing the plate of cookies on one of the office desks, near the computer Claudia particularly favored, when she and Steve wandered in from inventorying, Leena following not far behind from putting the newly-cataloged artifacts away. “Yes!” Claudia fell upon the cookies with a fist-pump, tossing one over her shoulder at Jinks and another underhanded at Leena.

“Watch the crumbs!” Artie was compelled to protest, sitting down behind the keyboard again. He could write up notes with one hand on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s pen while he played the keyboard with the other.

“Artie,” Claudia rolled her eyes, “when was the last time you actually vacuumed in here? Really? Please, man. Please.”

“I’ve put all the artifacts away, Artie,” Leena smoothly interrupted before Artie could start working up a really good splutter, exchanging glances with Steve. Claudia rolled her eyes again at Artie, and he had to grab a cookie of his own in case they saw him smiling; it wouldn’t do to let them think he was going soft in his old age. “And now I should be getting back to the house to take care of some chores around there.” She paused by Artie’s keyboard, frowning down at him reprovingly. “I will see you for dinner in an hour,” she said in a tone that would brook no argument.

He waved his hand, free now that he’d finished off the cookie. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Pete and Myka should be back—oh, sometime tomorrow; and _you_ two,” he swung around to look at the two younger field agents, “will be heading to a blues festival down in Memphis. Somebody has found one of Howlin’ Wolf’s old harmonicas.”

“What? Yes!” Another fist pump from Claudia, and then she bumped fists with Jinks. She snagged another cookie after that.

“Don’t eat too many cookies before dinner,” Leena told them all and left the Warehouse. “Pshaw,” Claudia called over her shoulder, but Leena was already gone.

“Oh!” Claudia swung around in her chair. “We got one for you.”

Artie sighed. “Really, you two, I don’t see why everyone—”

“No, no, Artie, it’s good,” Steve interrupted with a grin. He leaned against another table, careful not to touch anything on it—he’d learned that one the first week—and subtly snagged his own cookie.

“Okay.” Claudia cleared her throat. “Woodcut of Vlad Tepes that’s sitting in the Escher Vault, 1932.”

Artie leaned back in his chair and finally stopped playing the keyboard one-handed, so he could think more clearly. “1932,” he repeated.

“No databases, no computers,” Claudia said, folding her arms.

“I know the rules.” Artie stood up and headed for the card catalog. “I’m going to say it was here by 1932, but let me just—” He headed right for the drawer he needed—a simple alphabetical system, yes, but with a highly sophisticated cross-referencing system and subject classification laid over it—and started digging through the cards. He refrained from simply tossing them out of his way; the last time he’d let his exuberance get the better of him everyone else had categorically refused to file the cards back and he’d had to do it himself, wasting valuable time. “Ah-ha! It was _not_ in fact here yet but was sitting in a Nazi warehouse. In 1933 it was transported from Paris to Austria but had been part of an apparent bombing—when in reality Warehouse agents picked it up and brought it to Warehouse 12. It was brought to Warehouse 13 a few years later.” He turned around triumphantly. “Ha!”

“Haha, yes, good for you.” Claudia looked at Jinks. He shrugged, she sighed and turned back to her computer.

“I’m going to see if Leena needs any help,” Steve told Artie and headed out when Artie shooed him on his way.

Claudia dragged Artie away for dinner and made him stay afterward to play card games with them; he cleaned them all out at Hearts, and then Jinks trounced them all at Crazy 8s. Artie had brought the rest of the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with him, and they polished those off for an after-dinner snack with some of Leena’s herbal tea. “Tomorrow morning, first thing,” Artie told Claudia and Jinks, handing them their plane tickets as he headed out the door back to the Warehouse. “Don’t oversleep.”

“Don’t look at me,” Steve said, holding up his hands and looking at Claudia pointedly.

“Oh, whatever, like _you_ haven’t occasionally slept through your alarm.”

“I don’t know how you can sleep through that thing,” Steve argued, following her up the stairs to the bedrooms. “It sounds like whales meeting death metal music.”

“You have no musical soul, you know that, Jinksy? _None_.”

“Good night!” Artie yelled up the stairs after them, then turned to Leena. “Good night, Leena,” he said more quietly, and she smiled.

“Banana chocolate chip tomorrow,” she told him, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“You think?” he drew back and gave her a thoughtful look.

“Definitely,” she said and closed the door behind him.

*

Artie had a nightly ritual, when his life wasn’t interrupted by mayhem, chaos, and imminent and dire threat to the world (so perhaps not quite as ritualistic as it could have been). He powered down what computers he could, shut down non-essential programs on the others and turned off their monitor screens. He shut off as many of the lights around the Warehouse as he could, checked the temperature and humidity monitors to make sure they were functioning properly and controlling the environment the way they should. And he always walked some small piece of the Warehouse, just to check in.

There was usually something for him to do in whatever corridors and nooks he walked—an artifact trying to escape, a mouse trap that needed resetting, somebody leaving behind an artifact bag rather than taking it with them, something else out of place or in need of tidying. Some nights he needed the walk more than others: to clear his head, to sort out some particularly tangled problem, to accomplish one tiny and finite task because the other tasks of his life were too overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable.

Tonight he didn’t need the walk much; it had been a good day, a relatively quiet but productive day. He patted one of the shelving unit braces, a silent good night to the Warehouse. He knew the others thought of his relationship with the Warehouse as yet another of his eccentricities, his odd little quirks. It was more than that, of course—a place like this, full of objects like this, didn’t remain untouched. It took on a life of its own. In many ways literally.

Myka and Claudia would understand that someday, he was fairly sure. Pete and Jinks might too. Someday.

Artie climbed up to the office and took one last look around at the shelves and shelves and shelves of objects under his care, brilliant and terrifying and dangerous and awesome artifacts that all could change the world.

He grinned and doffed an imaginary hat.

“Good night,” he said to the Warehouse and went to bed.


End file.
